Autobiography - The Galindo Group

Ram Galindo THE MAKING OF AN AMERICAN Page 165
matters related to geography and history. I don’t think I ever took the title from him on
the subject of world capitals. He knew where every country in the world was and what
city was its capital. He also knew the name of the leader of the country and what the
country was known for. In addition to history and geography, my sister Toqui knew
about math and business questions and she was an expert on music and record
players. We had an advantage on my brother Chuso in that he was five years younger
than me, and three than Chris. Yet, he held his own, often beating us in some subjects
then, and close to always, as a grown up. Vivian was in her first years of school and she
already knew some world geography. We grew up accepting the need for knowledge
and competition and preparing for both.
The intellectual curiosity that these games aroused in us, coupled with the ability my
sister Toqui had to attract truly worthy young men as she was growing up, ignited an
interest in my mind about flying and airplanes. As a young teenager, helped by one of
my sister’s friends, Alberto Pereira, I learned how to build balsa wood model airplanes.
The hobby taught me much about structural design, streamlined shapes, and
aerodynamics. I learned about specific gravity and other physical attributes of matter.
When I finally encountered these subjects in college, I already knew something practical
about them. Since my family didn’t have the custom of handing out unearned
allowances, I didn’t have money to buy pre-made airplane model kits. So I bought, or
more often, made copies of blueprints and then cut my own sticks from balsa wood that
came from the jungle forests near Cochabamba. Thus I learned about preparing
drawings in advance of construction and finding cheaper alternatives if there were any.
The mid-1940s up to the mid-1950s were the years of my childhood. Although
Cochabamba had a few movie houses, I don’t recall going to the movies until I was in
my teens. But when I was a child my parents figured out ways to entertain us very well. I
almost still sense the excitement we and all the cousins felt when on certain weekends
my father, who had an 8 mm. movie projector and some Walt Disney cartoon films,
would put on a show for the whole clan. Even though we saw the same cartoons over
and over again they were days to remember! During school days we would do our
homework before Dad came home, and he would check it thoroughly if we needed help.
We then had a couple of hours to play together before bedtime. On weekends we
usually got together with cousins and friends and played outdoors, went swimming,
hiking and told tall tales to each other.
As soon as I was able to read well enough to follow a story, I ran into a collection of
books by the distinguished Brazilian writer, Monteiro Lobato. He wrote about life on
Brazilian farms set in the mid to late 19 th century, about the time of Portuguese slave
emancipation. The hero was a boy about my age with whom I immediately identified.
His adventures went from unmasking old terror country tales to bridging the class gap
between owners and slaves. As I became a teenager engulfed by my aviation hobby, I
took up reading about the adventures of Bill Barnes, a Long Island aviator from whom I
learned much about planes. Both collections were, of course, Spanish translations. Both
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